Cat Eyes---A Cat Woman's Photos: Too Many Cats!

I had reservations today for 13 cats. I was taking six from Lebanon and seven, if trapped, from Peoria road. Those seven were a dumped off tame calico, who had five kittens and the impregnator, thought also to have been dumped off.

So I caught all seven of those, including the big guy male.

The woman comes last night with the Lebanon six, four of them kittens I thought she had weighed. But she'd only weighed them on a human scale. They were all under two pounds. They come from the property where she boards her horse. The old woman who lives there doesn't take care of them well, feeds them dog food, is apparently a stuff hoarder, is being foreclosed on, plans to leave behind any cats left when she moves out, maybe about November.

So the horse boarder is taking it upon herself to help the poor cats. She gave away the kittens mother. She hopes the people she gave her to are decent souls, not assholes, but she doesn't know.

The poor kittens were crawling in fleas, alive in fleas, and their little ears were overflowing and impacted in ear mite debris. I called Heartland and they said they would take the three boys. She's keeping the little torti girl. The boys are in my bathroom. I've already bathed them, flea treated them, cleaned out their ears and wormed them. They have pregnant worm bellies. They're much happier already, with the earmite debris gone. They can hear again.

The two adult males she brought to be fixed are gorgeous, in color. She brought them in the old woman's filthy dirty carriers. She had told the old woman to be ready with them, and she had them in these disgusting carriers. The one boy looks, in color, like a muted torti. Most unusual coloration I've seen in ages. They're tame and I wish I had somewhere they could go and not back there, because they have to go eventually somewhere else or be left behind.

So I'm down four in numbers because the four kittens are too small. The Portland rescue who took the Lebanon kitten with the exploding eye said they'd take his siblings, in fact have been after me to go find them, to save them. They and the vet they took him to think Oregon Humane investigators should be involved in that situation and the negligance going on there. When they say that I think of more than a dozen situations just like it, off the top of my head and know I could think of a hundred easily. This county is bad for treatment of animals. Very very bad.

I go over and the women who had taken out the bad eyed kitten, who live a few blocks away, say they took out two more, three weeks old, bloody from fleas. The other three died. The man, the caretaker agrees any kittens can be rehomed if rescues willing can be found.

I grab the black sibling of the bad eyed gray tux quickly and put him in a carrier. Cats are all over the place. Many are fixed. I got them fixed almost two years ago. The other neighbor drives by. Young people. They want them fixed but will not lift a finger. A guy drives by when I'm getting a trap, rolls down his window and glares at me.

Finally he says, "You better not be bringing cats here." I don't know what to say. His manner is mean and threatening. I finally say, "I don't know who you are, but I'm a volunteer and I'm getting your neighbhorhood's cats fixed. And it's not like you couldn't have done that." He drives off.

The caretaker comes around the corner grinning. He says he pulled the drop trap string and dropped the trap, which I'd just set up, on one of the unfixed mothers. I panic and rush around, because the drop trap has to be covered and held down or the cats can escape. I get her transferred out into a trap.

I catch a gray unknown skinny male out front. Then a flea ridden black male. Then they all come out of the woodwork. I'm running out of traps. I didn't bring many. A young male goes under the drop trap along with two teen kittens. I wait, because another mother, mother of the four teens, is nearby. Finally, she strolls under with the yearling male and one of her four teen kittens. I've already caught two of them. I yank the cord and drop the trap. But what to put them all in. I have only one empty trap. I use it for the mom. I transfer one of two already caught teens in with the other and transfer the yearly male from the drop trap into that trap. Finally, I take the black kitten out of the carrier and put him in with the two teens. Then I transfer the black teen from the drop trap to the carrier. I have to quit, even though one kitten, the sibling of the black kitten and the bad eyed kitten now in Portland, needs caught. Also, one of the four teens, a black tux, needs caught. Two more unfixed males have showed up. And there is a third unfixed female I have not caught, the mom of the two surviving three week olds now safe. Nine cats and kittens in all from this one colony, 8 of them fixing size, but I'm four cats over my reservations number for the clinic.

The only donation comes from the neighbor woman who has now saved three kittens from this man's yard and lives several blocks away. $5. All she had. The home owner, the caretaker, grunts and donates nothing.